Faro Island Film Festival

Thanks. This mentions an event for films from 1987 held in 2019. The IMDb award year should usually be the year the award was given, but I can see that this type of event may pose a challenge.

Beyond that, it is hard to find any information about a Faro Island in China.

@Michelle​ 

Was there any response?

If the events/awards are recent, it is misleading to list them as taking place since 1927.

@Michelle​ This does not seem to meet any of the event eligibility criteria and it specially fits to examples of what would not be accepted.

First, that link is from a Chinese social media site wechat, something like a Twitter or a blog, I mean, something anyone can post.

When I searched for it, I couldn't find any official site, because there's none. I found a user profile on Chinese movie database site Douban which is almost the only thing that can be found about it. Its posts start in 2019. And this blog-group like page in Douban which most links don't work. This indicates start year 2018, in another page it's 2019, not sure which one is correct. 2018 or 2019, and it supposedly reached 28th edition in only a few years, it's clearly not annual.

While searching for press coverage, which is impossible to find, found this post which has everything to explain why this is not an eligible event: https://new.qq.com/rain/a/20200609a05byu00

Some quotes from that post about this (used google translate):

"fans spontaneously organized"

"kicks off in 2019"

"Initiated by Douban fans"

"award-winning films are selected by ratings from movie fans"

"This seems to be the self-entertainment of Douban fans"

And these are the event eligibility criteria: https://help.imdb.com/article/contribution/other-submission-guides/events/G9DXDPWT2TWSXP8U

- Be established for more than 5 years. - Fails

- Have an official website. - Fails

- Have a well-established jury or method of selecting winners. For example, anyone can start a website with voting mechanisms, and any would-be critic can select their favourite movies of the year and announce them on their own website or social media profile - these Events are not eligible. - If you check the quotes I picked above, you can see it fails everything here as it's apparently a fan event where "films are selected by ratings from movie fans"

This page talks about "bar friends" as jury, most things written here doesn't look serious: https://site.douban.com/305224/widget/notes/194591797/note/806226876/

- Have received regular international or national press coverage (wide or trade). For example, a nationally broadcast awards ceremony or a festival award winner announced in recognized trade or other media publications would be eligible for listing. An Event with only local news, social media, fan or blog coverage is not eligible for listing at this time. - Fails big time. No press coverage, only a few social media or blog posts. The link you posted is a social media post as well.

It obviously does not meet this thing as well: "For example, if a festival premiered a movie that went on to win an Oscar, that Event would be considered for listing"

So it fails everything other than being "specifically centered around movies". From my understanding it's more like a fan gathering or something (actually I think it may be all online, I can't find any event images or videos anywhere, it could very well be all fiction as well, I mean it could be just a fictitious thing among some douban members). It doesn't look right to me to attach so many high profile names and films to a dubious "event" like this as winners and nominees when they most likely did not even heard about it.

And there's also the date/year mess Peter mentions. It may be best to consider deleting this event page considering this many problems.

@Michelle​ I also had a recent comment about this here: https://community-imdb.sprinklr.com/conversations/data-issues-policy-discussions/correcting-a-film-festival-name/63e400b5a5589135ff2a555e?commentId=63e50c550a803f3817a443d8&replyId=647a53f43c5a9e40b70e5741

where I said "I even have more details gathered and became fairly certain it's all hoax" but I didn't post it because even the above reply did not get a response for 4 months. This should be deleted ASAP instead of being "investigated" (better word: stalled) for another few years because it spreads misinformation to every corner of the internet due to all the popular titles and names getting attached to this hoax page. It's already on more than 500 pages on Wikipedia and it's all because of IMDb. You're being a big source of misinformation when you continue to keep this hoax page. I'll make a cleanup request to Wikipedia too but waiting for it to be removed from here first.

It should be deleted ASAP without being stalled for another few years. I don't trust your editors will be able to "investigate it thoroughly". They'll probably just perform a few Google searches and will see some results and will keep it without noticing IMDb is the reason for all that spread.

Hi @mbmb​ -

Thanks for highlighting this other thread.  We are still investigating the reported event (as we still need to determine if there is any factual information to salvage), however, I have now pulled the event listing from the site, which addresses your concerns about misleading and/or misinformation.

@Michelle​ Thank you for taking action and preventing a hoax from spreading further. I can say you would be wasting time by trying to find things to salvage on this so-called Chinese event page. My findings about this were all indicating some trolling activity, a fun among some Chinese users of a site. I mean do you expect something like this to be serious? (a small example text, when they're talking about their so-called juries): "14-year-old prodigy Ryan Gosling from the United States and 4-year-old genius girl Kristen Stewart. Nicole Kidman from Australia and 4-year-old genius girl Margot Robbie"

There's a "Mickey Rodger" mentioned as the so-called founder, and this kid drawing from a fandom page is all I can find for a "Mickey Rodger": https://cars-world.fandom.com/wiki/Mickey_Rodger

This car drawing certainly doesn't look like a festival founder to me :)

The user on that other thread was talking about this real event (he tought this hoax Chinese event page was for this real Swedish event about Bergman): https://www.bergmancenter.se/bergmanveckan/

But that real Swedish event's name is "Bergman Week" (or Bergmanveckan) and it might actually be eligible for a listing but it does not have an event page on IMDb yet and it has no relation with this fictitious, hoax Chinese event page.

@Michelle​ Sorry for bumping the thread after it was marked Solved but I have to write this so you can stop trying to find things to salvage on this trolling that continued for ~3 years (it's really unfortunate this was allowed to continue for 3 years, it could at least be stopped for new additions when Peter first reported it, even if it was not deleted immediately) and instead take steps against the troll(s) who did this.
Anyway, what I wanted to say is that even some award names on this event page was showing the trolling, like it had "Nobody Cares Competition" awards under "Humanitarian Award", and "FIPRESCI Prize" awards which is a prestigious award given at prestigious festivals and it even had FIPRESCI Prize awards for "Nobody Cares Competition" :)
Another thing I wanted to ask is did you do something to prevent a reoccurring of trolling like this in the future?

Hi @mbmb​ -

Thanks for your reply, I appreciate your feedback.  Know that I did review all your comments concerning your findings and this event listing, with that being said, behind the scenes the issue is more complex and will require a very extensive investigation which is currently underway. 

To provide you with some transparency, we have decided to remove this event listing in it's entirety and we will not be relisting any data associated with it unless sufficient and verifiable evidence is provided to prove it's existence (which is unlikely).  We are also investigating the contributor responsible and have taken actions to prevent future vandalism.

I hope this helps provide some clarify on the issue.  Thanks again, as always for your very comprehensive research.